mv1 🔛🔝

Bez connects to the aux and switches on something mellow. Marc gazes out the window. He’d laid awake last night wondering what Valentino had looked like when he’d said it — that he wanted Marc to come to the ranch again. Whether he’d been open and honest, if Bez had seen undisguised eagerness. Or hard — spiteful. Keen to watch Marc hurt up close, get his eyes on all the scars. At least he knows to exercise some control this time. No drinking. No fucking around. Keep his tongue tucked behind his teeth, words locked up in his head where they belong. He’ll ride if Bez asks him to, and will otherwise stay out of the way.

Unless Valentino calls for him.

Bitterness spreads across his tongue. He’s been coming when Valentino calls for years. Got out of the web only to be pulled back in, woven into his team no less. It’s a sickness, at this point. Something infectious about Valentino that has made him terminal. Ironic.

His head lolls back against the seatrest, and Bez peers at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Are you feeling okay about it?” he asks, tentative. It being going back to the ranch. Marc thinks about answering with complete, unfiltered honesty. Wonders how much he’d have to say for Bez to understand the full truth; to register the gravitational weight of Valentino in his life. He plays with the idea for no more than a second. It would split him open to talk about, and it’s too early to bleed.

“I don’t know,” he answers. Enough sincerity in his tone for Bez to blink away from the road again. “It is hard to think that everything is real with Valentino. That there is no second — ulterior motive.”

That’s testing. Suggesting that Valentino commits intentional wrongs to his veritable disciple. Bez digests that, tightening his fingers on the steering wheel.

“I guess we know him differently,” he settles on, measured. Unwilling to rescind loyalty, but just as unwilling to fray at the edges of this borderline friendship they’re starting to cross into. Marc can respect that — would’ve rejected the idea similarly, all those years ago. But Bez is wrong.

“I knew him how you did, when I was younger. It is very easy to like Valentino, and to feel liked by him. Especially when you feel liked by him.” He turns his eyes to the scenery again. Valentino had been everything for a few years there. There was almost no space left in his lungs for air, in his veins for blood, with how much room Valentino took up inside of him. “Very easy.”

They lapse into silence. Not tense, but thoughtful. Eventually, Bez turns the radio down again.

“Will you ride?”

Marc hums. Maybe he feels like he has less to lose this time. Less to lose and absolutely nothing to prove.

“I would like to get out for a couple laps,” he admits. “Just to see the track.”

“Nice. Cool.”

He won’t push it. Not on one of Valentino’s bikes, not signed to his team, not with the precarity of the last ten years balancing on a knife point between them. To ride it again without the need to win, to shine, might cauterise something in him. If he could only be so lucky.

All his calm evaporates when the ranch comes into view. Bez drops a hand from the wheel, takes the winding road towards the house and track like he could do it blind. There’s not as many cars as last time, and no one comes running to greet them when Bez parks.

“Who did you say would be here?” he asks, closing the door and shielding his eyes against the mid-morning sun. Bez starts to trek around the side, towards the track, and Marc follows.

“It should only be some of us from the academy. Pecco, Celin, Maro, Mig. Maybe Franky. Maybe some more depending on their schedules.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t know if that’s worse or better than last time. Less eyes. More attention. More space for Valentino in his conversations. Discomfort prickles on the back of his neck. They come around the corner and the track appears in all its bright white glory. There’s a figure on a motocross bike cutting around a turn, smooth and mean. When the dust clears Marc spies royal blue, neon yellow flames crawling up long arms and legs. He’d recognise Valentino without it, from the shape of his body on the bike, the angles and lines.

“Bez,” a voice bites. The guys Bez had just listed are perched in camping chairs around a table littered with soda cans and food. It’s Pecco, who’s stood up and is giving Bez a completely thrown, wide-eyed look. Luca pulls himself to his feet beside Pecco, bewilderment scrawled in the open lines of his face.

Marc looks at Bez. Then out to Valentino on the track, skidding to a stop as he crosses the finish line. Back to Bez, bottom lip captured by his teeth, cheeks scrunched high by something like guilt. Nausea hits Marc like a fucking freight train. They don’t know. They didn’t fucking know.

“Bez,” he breathes, taking a step back. Bez raises both his hands.

“Okay, if you all wait, this is not — I think we need to —”

“Does Valentino know?” Luca interrupts. Valentino has started towards them. Marc can’t see his eyes through the visor. Can’t tell if he’s noticed him yet.

“You told me that —” panic rears in his chest like a frightened horse, seizes the words in his throat. “You said he knew, that he asked.” He takes another step, and then Valentino’s in front of them, wrenching his helmet off. They lock eyes for one awful moment, and Marc has — Bez has fucked this into the ground. Made it a million times worse. He pins his gaze to the pavement, lungs starting to flutter with the beginnings of an actual panic attack. That gets strangled down immediately, breath held with an iron grip. Things can’t get more humiliating. He can’t let it get worse than this.

“I have to go,” he manages, choked. He throws a look at the others, hoping it reads as an apology as he starts to back up the way they came. He tacks on, “I didn’t know,” in an effort to really get the message across. This wasn’t his fault. Bez throws a beseeching look over his shoulder, swinging to follow Marc.

“No, it’s —”

Valentino’s voice cuts through the clamour in his head.

“You are already here.” 

Everything else falls quiet, the way it tends to do when Valentino speaks, demanding deference even when he doesn’t mean to. Marc stills. He can see the car. Knows Bez left the keys on the front seat. It’s not more than thirty metres away. He could make it in seconds.

“You might as well stay.”

The words force his hand, craning his neck back over his shoulder to gauge Valentino’s expression. The academy boys are watching him silently, registering the clearly unexpected note of casualness in Valentino’s voice. A quiet invitation. You might as well. It’s easier if you do. Why make things more difficult than they need to be. Valentino had echoed the sentiment to him before, when he’d thought Marc too fickle, painful — too much. Marc flicks his eyes across several anticipating faces. 

“Right? That’s — right, yes,” Bez says, as if he had any way of knowing how this would pan out. Marc wants to shake him. The molehill of trust between them blows away into nothing. It hurts a little, spears him right through the chest. But there’s too much happening right now to investigate the motive behind the lie. If Bez had set out to embarrass him, incite Valentino’s anger at such an intrusion in the hopes it would be enough to send Marc’s contract through the shredder. Or if it had been for something else. The same way every time he asks about Marc’s arm it’s for something else. 

Valentino doesn’t say anything after that. In fact he disappears completely, “Showering,” thrown over his shoulder as he ducks inside. Pecco collapses back into his seat, eyebrows at his hairline like his mind’s been blown. Bez hovers awkwardly at Marc’s side, and Marc can’t even deal with that right now, can’t cope with being pissed at the only person he curries a little bit of favour with in this place.

“I can set you up with a bike,” Luca says suddenly, stepping around the table. Bez brightens immensely, as if he’s thinking, yes, someone else on board with this! 

“Thanks,” Marc mutters, too stunned to decline. Luca indicates for them to follow him around to a shed nearby. He wheels a bike out from the shadow into the sun. It’s not that different from the one Valentino had offered Marc back in 2014, before he realised Marc had brought his own, plus mechanics. Guilt curdles sour in his stomach.

“Do you have leathers and a helmet with you?” Luca asks.

“Yeah, in the car.”

Bez is gone before either of them can blink, calling, “I’ll get them,” as he goes. Luca eyes Marc like he’s trying to solve a mystery.

“Did you not know that no one knew?”

Marc swallows thickly. He doesn’t have a problem with Luca, and doesn’t really think Luca has a problem with him, somehow managing to be ridiculously impartial despite the Valentino of it all. He shakes his head.

“Bez said Valentino told him to invite me. And that he was worried, maybe. He thought the bike was the problem in Assen.” The words choke up in his throat. Hope had kindled to life at the thought — Valentino being worried about him. Suggesting that he thought it wasn’t Marc that had fucked up. Like usual.

“He lied,” Luca intones. He’s staring up at the others under the shade, face twisted in thought. There’s nothing malevolent in his voice. Marc knows he’s just telling the truth. “But you’re still here, so.”

“What does that mean?”

Luca levels him with a flat look.

“Vale could have told you to leave. Made Bez drive you back to the airport.”

Bez appears beside them again, Marc’s leathers and helmet bag in hand.

“He would not do that,” Bez argues. Marc turns to him, bewildered, because has Bez not seen — just, anything. Ever.

Luca hums.

“This is good,” Bez insists, pressing the gear into Marc’s hands. “Change in the shed.”

The door closes behind him.

This is good. He spins that over in his mind, nebulous and blurry. Good for who. Good for teambuilding? Or good for whatever Bez thinks the two of them have going on? He zips his leathers up to his chin, hands lingering at his neck. Luca is right. Valentino hadn’t spat. Hadn’t been cruel or sharp — in fact had been so instantaneously accepting that Marc had felt winded by it. Whiplashed.

The fire picks up heat in his chest, burns a little brighter. He steps back into the sunlight, pulling his helmet firm over his mouth. Luca and Bez send him off on the bike, and he twists to peer back up at the house as he rides onto the track. Valentino’s returned, a towel draped around his shoulders, hair curling wetly across his forehead. His hands are planted on his hips, appraising, attention lasered to Marc.

Marc feels like a teenager again, lining up on the Moto2 grid, knowing the premier class riders were watching from the sidelines. He wastes no time getting up to speed and hurtles through the first corner. So much for not pushing it. Add it to the list of things that happen to him because of Valentino. A star-bright need to show what he’s worth; what he can do. 

Marc leans out of the box to peer up at the sky. It’s dark, clouds swollen and grey. He tries not to wallow, tries not to think the weather looks just how he feels, due to start the sprint in twenty minutes from down in P10. It’s been raining on and off, and everyone’s soaked to the bone and over the weekend before it’s even halfway done. He chances a look over his shoulder. Valentino’s leant up against the back wall, engaged in an impassioned conversation with Salucci. The expression on his face is thunderous.

It rolls Marc’s stomach. He just wants to get on the bike and get this whole thing over with.

He rolls home from the sprint in P7, and he’s tired. Once his helmet comes off, he can feel Valentino watching him. The feeling is prickling, persistent, and when Marc finally turns his head to meet Valentino’s eyes, he’s three seconds away from just ditching his leathers and walking out. Valentino starts walking over, and seriously, what has he done to deserve this.

“Did you hit your head?”

Marc scowls. 

“At the ranch. Are you concussed?”

“What are you talking about,” Marc huffs, anxiety crawling up his neck.

“The way you are riding. Like you do not care. Are you doing it intentionally, or is there something wrong with you?”

He goes cold. His eyes drop to the ground and stay there. He was preparing for this — he knew — he knew Valentino was going to get like this. It still hits him like a punch in the gut. When he looks up again, he has to squint against the expression on Valentino’s face. He’s angry. Marc laughs drily. Valentino shakes his head, shrugs dramatically and takes a step back, like he just can’t figure Marc out. Like there’s nothing worth understanding. It’s a cauterising thing to watch. Burning, but no longer bleeding. If that’s anything.

He walks back to his motorhome the second he’s allowed. The feeling isn’t something he’ll be able to sleep off. It’s a matter of waiting, the same way it always is with Valentino. Days. Months.

Twenty to thirty years.

The next day, sitting on the grid before lights out, he can feel that the wound hasn’t scabbed over yet. And it’s worrying. They keep showing Valentino on the TV screens. Valentino keeps appearing in his peripheral, flitting between his protégés. He can hear his voice. Allora, eh, it’s good to see — whatever. He presses his head to the bike. It’s like getting stabbed and having to hang out with the knife all the fucking time. 

The grid starts to clear. Finally.

Lap eleven. He goes down. Just loses the front by nothing more than a centimetre, probably. Slides across the track behind his bike and rolls through the gravel.

The world isn’t ending. It just feels like it is. It just feels like it is. It just feels like it is.

He pulls himself to his feet. His heart’s still going. He’s standing. The bike’s in the dirt in front of him, wheels spinning. The marshalls arrive, frantic, pushing and tugging. He lets them manoeuvre him through the barriers. Shakes his head when they ask if he’s hurt.

He keeps his head down when he gets back to the box. Takes the furthest path to skirt around Valentino with the most possible distance between them. Stands with his pack to the cameras and fumbles to rip his gloves off, and his hands are shaking. He abandons them to yank his helmet off and dump it on the seat, shoulders tense and high. Now that he can breathe, he goes for the gloves again. Squeezes them tight between his hands to stop himself from flinging them to the floor.

The deep breath he takes pulls smoke up from his lungs, heart a red hot cinder. He tries not to choke on it.

. . .

Valentino watches Marc’s interview with his nails between his teeth. Irritation cuts like a blade up his throat, and he doesn’t even know what at. At Marc, at Uccio. At the rain, the track, the fucking reporter, everything.

“I just — it was my fault, I lost focus, lost the front. I was not thinking or feeling right.”

Valentino’s teeth catch on the skin of his finger, pinching.

“I will do better next time,” Marc tacks on, but it doesn’t sound genuine. The smile he flashes the reporter is just a pained baring of teeth, and his eyes are rimmed with red. He outstretches his hand to inspect the damage. His index finger is raw to the bed. Uccio clucks beside him, shaking his head.

“Ridiculous.”

“Have Jean check his bike in case something was missed. It is out of character. He shouldn’t have gone down there,” Valentino muses, finger in his mouth.

Uccio gives him a look, eyebrows quirked in surprise. He jams his hand into his pocket.

“What?”

“If you punch someone in the face, they are going to get a black eye, you know,” he says, mouth curved in a smirk. Valentino just stares.

“What? Are you saying this is my fault?”

Uccio lifts a shoulder.

“I heard you got into it at the ranch. Everyone is saying you said something to him. Does not bother me, I think serves him right, but I told you he should not have been allowed to go. It is a pain to fix the bike because he is riding like shit now.”

Valentino blinks. The look on Uccio’s face makes him want to spit.

. . .

Marc almost doesn’t open the door. Three quiet knocks. Twelve seconds of silence, and another, more hesitant rapping. He pulls himself off the couch, hesitant to even pray against it being Valentino, in case the mere thought of his name in Marc’s head is enough to summon him.

It’s Bez, leathers foregone for a too-big hoodie and a loose pair of black sweatpants. Marc stares.

“Hello,” he starts, tentative. “Can I come in?” Marc steps out of the way, pulling the door closed behind Bez and returning the greeting a beat too late. Bez slides his hands into his pockets and stands awkwardly in the middle of the room. Marc gestures to the couch and they both sit.

“Are you…?” Marc begins, unsure where he’s even going with that.

“Ah, so,” Bez says, like he’s remembered what he came here for. “We are going back to the ranch, before Silverstone.” Marc goes rigid. “For a couple days, Vale has got dirt bikes and karts, so. It will be more casual than last time.”

“I can’t,” he blurts, defensive, instinctual. “Because Valentino —”

“Vale told me to ask you,” Bev interrupts, eyes flicking from his fingernails to Marc’s face. He’s picking at his cuticles, scraping the skin red. “It is good team building.”

“He told you to?”

Bez shrugs.

“I think he thinks you are down, maybe he is worried, I don’t know. I just say that it seems like that.”

“He’s worried,” Marc intones. The tattoo throbs, brand-like in his skin. His precariously placed house of cards wobbles. The wall he’d built, the glacier he’d started surrounding himself with — cracks appear.

“I heard him say they needed to check your bike, because he does not think you would normally have gone down there. I don’t know. But you should come to the ranch.” Bez rubs over the raw beds of his nails, squeezes his hands together in his lap.

Marc swallows the smoke rising in his throat.

“You should race, too. It would be fun. If your arm is okay.”

His arm is — it’s the same as always. It won’t stop him from getting on the bike. But he’s reeling, healing rapidly and healing wrong, bone chips in the tissue, blood clots and picked scabs. Because Valentino is worried. And Valentino wants him at the ranch.

“Okay,” he breathes, hating himself for it. Throwing second, third, and fourth chances out like confetti. Bez straightens up, eyes clearing.

“Yeah? I will book you a plane ticket with me. We can carpool again, from Rimini.”

Valentino had asked, is there something wrong with you? Marc thought he had heard definitiveness in the question. Are you concussed? Did he — if he fucking invented it, put poison in the powder without even thinking, then. He bites through his lip. Bez stands across from him.

“Is that okay with you? We can meet at the gate tomorrow morning.” Marc looks up, pulled from the violent whirlpool he’d sunk into.

“Yes. Yeah,” he croaks, barely meeting Bez’s eyes. “Thanks.”

“It’s no worries,” Bez replies. He lingers for a second, watching Marc. Something tugs at his brow. Marc thinks he sees guilt, or pity, but — it’s gone in an instant, replaced with a thrown smile as Bez lets himself out.

IM SOO EXCITED ABT THIS ONEEEE

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So his stomach churns through each left-hand corner, usual confidence and control shaky under threat. There’s no grip, which he knows — which he’s used to. But today the rear is threatening to slide out from underneath him, and it feels too much like saying things he shouldn’t have said. He rolls back into the box in P9. Every set of eyes is a needle in his spine. It’s a small mercy that Valentino’s not around.

He takes his helmet off, eyes drifting to the TV, to Bez’s P4 qualifying. To Bez clawing his hair into something neat, talking animatedly with —

Valentino.

Marc’s eyes snap to the floor. It’s like a gun going off, the sudden surge of anxiety, the burning need to be anywhere else. He stands, making brief eye contact with his engineer to confirm he’s no longer needed. Valentino’s seen the movement, though, pushing away from where he’d been speaking to Bez and slouching over, hands in his pockets. Marc scrambles for an escape route.

There’s a gap, if he can just get by these people, if he can squeeze and be closer to the door than to Valentino — except someone steps back into him and he stumbles and then Valentino’s got a hand on his shoulder, planting him firmly back on two feet. Marc yanks himself away, feeling branded even through his leathers. There’s a charge between them, dark and rippling, and Marc wills it to lie flat, wills his face to settle into something without the anticipation of hurt.

Valentino says nothing for a moment. Drops his hand and stares down his nose at Marc. When Marc shifts his weight, itching to leave, Valentino takes a step back. It’s too careful. It’s making him nervous.

“What is happening with the bike?”

Marc blinks, eyes darting around the box to gauge who’s listening in on their conversation.

“Nothing,” he answers, hesitant, unsure of where this is going. But Valentino doesn’t say anything. He’s just watching Marc, searching, calculating. Trying to read between all the lines that Marc has thrown up. When it looks like Vale is preparing to open his mouth again, Marc pivots, nimble like a prey animal and gone before he can hear Vale’s teeth click together.

He manages to avoid Vale entirely right up until the start of the sprint. He’s just swung his leg over, relinquished his weight to the bike and ducked his chin. Valentino draws himself away from Bagnaia seconds later. Marc doesn’t mean to notice — really, he tries not to, but it’s like Valentino’s got a magnet tucked between his teeth. That and Marc could pick the slope of his shoulders from a crowd of millions, years spent tracing the lines.

He bows his head before Valentino reaches him. Praying he takes it for the door closure it’s meant to be. Valentino’s sneakers appear in his vision and stay there, and his self-preservation instincts aren’t strong enough to keep him from looking up.

Valentino’s face is pulled tight — frustration in the scrunch of his brow and contempt in the curl of his mouth. Marc doesn’t need this. Doesn’t need whatever Valentino is about to say, doesn’t need the sick scrape of cut glass against his stomach lining. Marc won’t glare. He won’t even meet Valentino’s eyes. Keeps his focus somewhere beneath the other man’s chin, on his pulse point, his Adam's apple. Anywhere else. Valentino hisses through his teeth, and it startles Marc’s attention up to his mouth.

Valentino whispers, “what is your problem,” and it’s not even that Marc hears it — he watches it, Valentino’s lips forming each word, tight in the corners. Valentino walks away and the moment hardens like cement in Marc’s stomach.

He manages to climb a couple places in the sprint, the asymmetric tyre enough use over the short distance that he can push each corner without nursing it like a baby. It’s a feat that he races clean with the ball of mess rattling between his ears. He passes Fabio and tries not to look at the blue of the Yamaha any more than he has to.

P5 feels like a monstrous achievement, and he climbs off the bike foal-like, legs not yet ready to support him. Valentino’s looking at him again in the box, rolling his lips like he wants to say something. Accommodating this — accommodating all the extra shit in his head, the singe-spot of Valentino’s inevitable pull back like a cigarette burn on his brain — it makes the hours longer, tucks weight into the legs of his leathers and draws him down like an anchor. He ducks away when Valentino makes towards him, putting a desk and a mechanic between them and then beelining for his motorhome.

There’s a splinter of pride wedged between all the nausea. That’s he’s committing to it, finally, after years of bleeding. That it took one good knock, granted, a lightning bolt of vulnerability that he shouldn’t have allowed, but he’s getting out of it. And he’s doing it for self-preservation, a concept so foreign to him that it’s laughable as a driving force. The world isn’t ending, his heart isn’t stopping. It just feels like it is, and he can deal with feeling, because he’s been doing it for years — feeling written into the very core of him. Always pain, of course, as much a part of him as his heart, lungs, his teeth and tongue.

Álex finds him not long after. Knocks on the door to Marc’s motorhome — and for a second Marc seizes up, neural pathways firing glitter between each other because it could be Valentino — but he opens the door to his brother and pushes down the disappointment, sick with himself. All that perceived work, the heavy bricks of ego crumbling at the first glint of light. Álex catches the look in his eyes, mouth turning down at the corners at whatever he recognises it to be.

Marc lets him in wordlessly, offering a tired smile and closing the door to bustle around getting changed into sweats and packing things away. Álex falls into his couch, watching Marc cut laps across the room with all the composure of a caged animal.

“Are you doing okay?” he asks, finally, when Marc stills long enough to catch his gaze. Marc cracks a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. The last thing he wants is for Álex to be preoccupied with his bullshit. They’d had — well. Marc had spoken to him after the ranch. Briefly, on Thursday. He’d given nothing away in words, but in body language and posture he’s sure Alex had been able to read the bible of him.

“Yes, ha. Is just the grip, you know. I need to be careful with the rear tomorrow — nearly lost it a couple times today.”

“Not on the track, Marc,” Álex intones, eyes too knowing for Marc’s liking.

“Ah, so?” Marc waves his hands, unfolding and refolding a shirt that had been perfectly fine the way it was. He grits his teeth.

“Did something happen at the ranch?”

Cold shoots up his spine. He shakes his head minutely, but it’s too late. He already knows he’s going to tell Álex. He’ll let him push one more time.

“You can tell me, Marc. I don’t want to see you like this.”

He gives up on folding the shirt, balls it in his hands and holds it close to his chest like a shield.

“I think everything is finally ending, is all.”

Álex waits for more.

“I drank — too much, and said some things, apparently. And Bezzecchi said Valentino reacted weird, and now I think — I can tell he is acting different; mean, you know how he started to get after the first time around, yes? But I do not — I don’t think I can hold all that again.”

He swallows, trying to organise his thoughts. He hadn’t even really put a plan together, nothing more substantial than a desire to shut down, to close the blast doors before the missile hits.

“So, I am just going to stop reaching for him.” That’s open — that’s vulnerable. Álex doesn’t — he’d never exactly gone over all the twists and ties in his head about Valentino with Álex. But there’s enough there, enough in the rough, worn choke of his voice for Álex to fill in the gaps. Even if Marc doesn’t explicitly know them himself. The admission drips down the back of his throat like syrup. Sweet and bitter.

He pastes the trembling smile back on. Álex winces.

“It would be nice to win tomorrow, huh? Give him a hit.”

“Well, do it for yourself, though,” Álex replies, standing. He’s good at knowing when Marc has nothing left to say. Even better at knocking him off-balance with a simple comment, wise beyond his years. Álex presses a kiss to his cheek before he leaves, and Marc diligently keeps the fear out of his voice when he says goodnight.

He half expects something to have dislodged in his chest the next morning. Nothing’s moved, though, still packed to the brim with red memories and bone. A slow process, his therapist would call it. Like drops of tar, something that burns all the way down till it settles at the bottom. He shakes the empty rattle of his bones, knocks all the loose bits back into place as he makes his way out on track for the warmup. He takes it easy. Counts the corners, breathes with the bike. It feels like a meditation more than anything, even with the pre-race buzz simmering beneath his skin.

Soon after, he’s the last one to haul himself up onto the float for the parade. Álex is deep in a head-down conversation with Di Giannantonio, and Marc doesn’t want to be clingy, so when Bez catches his eye, he moves that way with little hesitation. They clap hands, and Marc leans back against the railing, playing at casualness. He still thinks Bez knows more than he’s letting on, and being on the outside is starting to grate on him.

“Feeling good?” Bez asks, looking at Marc through his sunglasses. Marc doesn’t like not being able to see his eyes. It reminds him of Valentino.

Cut that out.

“So-so,” he replies, releasing his bottom lip from the sharp capture of his teeth. “Yesterday was not good. Better today, I hope.”

“Yeah, hard when you get caught up in all the middle.”

They drift into race talk that Marc doesn’t need to use his brain power on. Bez doesn’t ask any suspicious questions, and Marc manages to keep all the sick feelings to himself. The hours left before the race blink by in minutes, and then he’s opening the throttle to a roaring crowd.

The start is rough — someone goes into his flank and he bounces through it, shoulders straining to keep the bike on the track, already down five places. From there things become monotonous fairly quickly. Gain a place, lose it to no grip, find himself faster than the others through the lefthanders — enough to be productive only half the time. Rinse and repeat. Viñales goes down right ahead of him on lap twenty, and he veers to avoid the bike and rider skittering across the asphalt. It takes a chunk out of his pace, but then Miller and Rins take each other wide and he manages to cut ahead of them.

The sun streams down on him through the clouds, and his mind flashes back to desperation, to lightning, cooling heat, hunting and seeking and it never being enough. He shakes his head. 

Are you choosing to be fast today?

Does he want the fight? Does he honest to God prefer the snap of teeth at his neck over icy nothing? He leans down into a corner, shoulder scraping the ground. The bike twitches beneath him, nervy. He can’t think about that.

In the last eight laps, he drags himself up to seventh. Something dark whispers that he should’ve binned it, summoned Valentino to his motorhome in the dark, all set with nothing nice to say. He could open the door with his leathers around his waist.

But P7 is a non-event after the race he’s had. And he can see Bez shaking his head up behind the podium finishers.

A slow process, he thinks, climbing off the bike so the mechanics can roll it back into the box. He meets Valentino’s eyes on his way in. Not to say anything, not to project any message. Just to get used to the emptiness. Valentino takes it as a fish hook, meeting Marc halfway across the garage with an unkind hand on his shoulder, one that doesn’t leave room for Marc to pull away. He can see the tilt of Valentino’s head, searching the side of Marc’s face, vying for attention and eye contact. There’s something Marc doesn’t like in the planes of his face — something too open. It doesn’t suit him. Marc keeps his gaze on the floor.

“If you are going to be this way, at least do what I hired you for,” Valentino says, watching, waiting for the cut, for Marc to flinch or protest or argue. Marc doesn’t do anything. When he finally lifts his eyes to Valentino’s face, the other man’s lips have drawn tight with irritation.